by allsunny on 1/17/19, 5:48 PM with 100 comments
by RcouF1uZ4gsC on 1/17/19, 7:06 PM
As a person of color, I would be very happy if it became policy to never use the phrase “white privilege” inside a workplace.
First of all it is making a blanket statement about an entire group of people. Saying <race> <attribute> is problematic as a principle.
Second, this too close for comfort to “white supremacy” for me. Both phrases describe white people as having a superiority to other races through the virtue of their whiteness.
Third, the phrase alienates people and makes them defensive. Most people can agree that having an environment where everyone can achieve their best is important. However, when you use words that cast people and their families as the villains and imply that they are not as deserving of what they earned as other people, then you turn them into your enemies.
I understand the phrase is trying to emphasize the historic and ongoing injustices against people of color. However, I think Trevor Noah’s phrase “black tax” is much more useful. This puts the focus on removing barriers and disadvantages, rather than on trying to remove someone’s “privilege”.
by protomyth on 1/17/19, 6:53 PM
by tippecanoe on 1/17/19, 6:54 PM
According to Facebook, in 2018 46.6% of their US staff identified as white and 41.4% identified as Asian (50.3% percent of US technical staff identify as Asian vs 42.7% who identify as white.)
by deogeo on 1/17/19, 6:42 PM
With only 1 woman on facebook's board of 9, men are considerably over-represented. But white people are not.
The board has 5 non-hispanic white people, 3 jewish, and 1 black. US demographics for those groups are 60%, 1.77%, and 12.6%.
This means white people are 92% represented, black 88%, and jewish 1880%.
by ng12 on 1/17/19, 6:47 PM
by xiphias2 on 1/17/19, 6:25 PM
by alexandercrohde on 1/17/19, 6:56 PM
Was she required to use this app for her job?
by jtms on 1/17/19, 6:45 PM
by crowdpleaser on 1/17/19, 6:52 PM
by byproxy on 1/17/19, 6:36 PM
That said, according to the article's statistics diversity is continually increasing at Facebook.
by bluecalm on 1/18/19, 12:33 PM
by ebiggs on 1/17/19, 7:05 PM
Oh wow, a woman headed react? That's cool.
Oh wait, a trans-woman... so that's socio-cultural diversity though not biological diversity - still born a white male.
Unless transgenderism isn't a choice but part of somebody's biological nature, then it is biological diversity, right?
erm, is being biologically predisposed to not liking chocolate also biological diversity? Wow, how much biological diversity goes unnoticed by diversity advocates? Maybe fb is biologically diverse after all!?
Isn't it cool we're all unique individuals with unique interests, although fb has mostly people who all share an interest in tech. True diversity would be to get people not interested in tech at fb.
by staunch on 1/17/19, 7:00 PM
You wouldn't see a candidate's face, name, hear their real voice, know their educational background, what economic class they're from.
You would conduct interviews over chat and voice (maybe use voice morphing software), which seems entirely plausible these days.
If anything, it would probably improve the hiring of qualified people. Interviewers can penalize candidates for all kinds of irrelevant things, not just sex and gender.
This would largely eliminate the very toxic problem of "diversity hires" that serve to perpetuate stereotypes. It would truly level the playing field.
by ariabuckles on 1/17/19, 7:40 PM
React as we think of it today simply would not exist without Sophie. The entire front-end ecosystem would be drastically worse.
It’s really sad to hear she won’t be leading the react team anymore, and worse to hear how some employees of Facebook treated her.
She’s hands down the best engineer I’ve ever worked with, and also a wonderfully kind and caring person.
Her leaving Facebook is a loss for the entire tech community. I hope her next endeavours treat her with the respect she deserves.
by peterwwillis on 1/17/19, 7:31 PM
by matte_black on 1/17/19, 7:17 PM